In recent years, a display apparatus having a touch panel has been popularly used as an intuitive input device. Since the touch panel allows operating multiple types of operation panels on a single screen, the touch panel is mainly used for ticket vending machines and ATMs. However, along with introduction of the touch panel to a mobile terminal and appearance of a touch panel interface such as Windows (Registered) 7, a market of the touch panel has been rapidly growing.
Also, an operation to select characters displayed on a display by copy/paste is routinely performed on the touch panel.
However, since the touch panel is generally flat in an operation face thereof and has no mechanical buttons or switches, a user does not obtain feedback upon operation. Therefore, there is a problem that the touch panel provides little operation sensation and increases erroneous operations.
As an input device that allows an intuitive input operation and provides a tactile sensation upon operation, Patent Document 1, for example, suggests a sound output apparatus that, in order to efficiently transmit information including language information and additive attribute information output to user's different sensations such as an auditory sensation and a tactile sensation as well as a visual sensation, reads aloud a character string and also provides a tactile sensation in a specific pattern by using a tactile pin based on attribute added to the character string.
Patent Document 1 also suggests a method to provide a tactile sensation pattern to a specific entry field in input to a plurality of entry fields by applying provision of the tactile sensation patterns by the tactile pin, and a method to provide the tactile sensation pattern based on information added to a file.
Also, Patent Document 2, in order to provide a key touch feeling in operation for the purpose of improvement of operability of the touch panel, suggests a method for a pen-shaped input apparatus having a vibration mechanism for the touch panel, when a position pressed by the pen-shaped input device on the touch panel is located in a display area of a character or a graphic, to provide vibration time, magnitude and pattern defined for each display area.